Daskalakis Stefanos

He was born in 1952 in Piraeus. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts, under Yorgos Mavroidis (1970-1974) and continued his studies at Lyon and Paris (1978-1981), where he attended the workshop of Leonardo Cremonini at the École des Beaux-Arts. He also became a student of  Yannis Tsarouchis for a period.
In his first solo exhibition in Athens (Syllogi gallery, 1982), he presented a figurative painting style, making use of the traditional technique of oil painting. The paintings depicted interiors and still lifes in a realistic manner and warm colors. His work received attention immediately and was associated with a broader shift towards traditional forms, which affected many young Greek artists at the time. This trend was considered to represent a kind of Greek postmodernism.

Over the following years, his painting became more complex, in terms of space representation and colour use, but also regarding the semantics of his works, with explicit references to the inevitable ravages of time, loneliness and abandonment. However, the dramatic elements, which refer either to Baroque or sometimes to expressionism, do not distort the precision of depiction. In more recent works, he engages in female portraits and nudes, with an even more dramatic painting and makes the existentialist reflection, which underpins his entire work, more obvious.
He has held several solo exhibitions, mainly in Greece, and has participated in many group exhibitions in Greece and abroad (France, Belgium, Italy, USA, etc.). He was among the 17 rising artists presented in the (classic by now) exhibition Towards a new Humanism (1990), curated by Marina Lambraki-Plaka, at the Cultural Centre Espace Les Esselieres in Villejuif, Paris.